by TChris

The shooting of Paul Childs, a disabled 15-year-old, is probably the most controversial of the five deaths caused by the Denver police this year.

Nine days ago, on a Saturday afternoon, Childs was standing in the living room of his mother's house holding a kitchen knife. His 16-year-old sister called 911 and told the dispatcher, "He's trying to stab my mother with it." (The family has since denied they felt threatened.)

Police responded. According to a family account, four officers pulled their guns. One of them, James Turney, shot and killed the youth after Childs failed to respond to repeated orders to drop the knife. It was the second time Mr. Turney has killed a citizen in the line of duty in the past 18 months.

A 2001 study ranked Denver "among the top 10 in fatal shootings per capita." Do some Denver officers have a tendency to "shoot first and ask questions later," as charged by Mark Silverstein, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado?

"The Denver Police Department historically has a disturbingly high number of these kinds of shootings of people without guns," says US Rep. Diana Degette (D) of Colorado, who is keeping an eye on the case. "It's cause for concern."

Critics of the Denver police are calling for a change in state law, which gives police "considerable discretion in using deadly force when they feel threatened."